Radio with antenna array and multiple RF bands

Abstract

A intelligent backhaul radio is disclosed that is compact, light and low power for street level mounting, operates at 100 Mb / s or higher at ranges of 300 m or longer in obstructed LOS conditions with low latencies of 5 ms or less, can support PTP and PMP topologies, uses radio spectrum resources efficiently and does not require precise physical antenna alignment.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a Continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15 / 403,713, filed on Jan. 11, 2015, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15 / 203,658, filed on Jul. 6, 2016, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,578,643, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14 / 988,578, filed on Jan. 5, 2016, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,408,215, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14 / 686,674, filed on Apr. 14, 2015, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,282,560, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14 / 337,744, filed on Jul. 22, 2014, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,055,463, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. of 13 / 645,472, filed on Oct. 4, 2012, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,811,365, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 371,366, filed on Feb. 10, 2012, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,311,023, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 212,036, filed on Aug. 1...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a fixed wireless access radio that can exchange data with other fixed wireless access radios. It includes multiple receive and transmit RF chains that convert signals within specific frequency bands. The radio also has multiple antenna elements that operate over specific frequency ranges. The technical effect of the invention is to provide a high-speed throughput capability using both the first and second receive and transmit frequency bands, with a surge throughput capability that is higher than the base throughput capability. The risk of temporal interference outage is also higher for the surge throughput capability.

Problems solved by technology

While deployment of optical fiber to an edge of the core data network would be advantageous from a network performance perspective, it is often impractical to connect all high bandwidth data networking points with optical fiber at all times. Instead, connections to remote edge access networks from core networks are often achieved with wireless radio, wireless infrared, and / or copper wireline technologies.

However, cellular base stations or WLAN access points inevitably become very high data bandwidth demand points that require continuous connectivity to an optical fiber core network.

These backhaul requirements cannot be practically satisfied at ranges of 300 m or more by existing copper wireline technologies.

Even if LAN technologies such as Ethernet over multiple dedicated twisted pair wiring or hybrid fiber / coax technologies such as cable modems are considered, it is impractical to backhaul at such data rates at these ranges (or at least without adding intermediate repeater equipment).

Such alignment is almost impossible to maintain over extended periods of time unless the two radios have a clear unobstructed line of sight (LOS) between them over the entire range of separation.

Furthermore, such precise alignment makes it impractical for any one such microwave backhaul radio to communicate effectively with multiple other radios simultaneously (i.e., a “point to multipoint” (PMP) configuration).

Although impressive performance results have been achieved for edge access, such results are generally inadequate for emerging backhaul requirements of data rates of 100 Mb / s or higher, ranges of 300 m or longer in obstructed LOS conditions, and latencies of 5 ms or less.

In particular, “street level” deployment of cellular base stations, WLAN access points or LAN gateways (e.g., deployment at street lamps, traffic lights, sides or rooftops of single or low-multiple story buildings) suffers from problems because there are significant obstructions for LOS in urban environments (e.g., tall buildings, or any environments where tall trees or uneven topography are present).

The conventional PTP radio on a whole is completely unsuitable for obstructed LOS or PMP operation.

Images